Timee
by Blasphemouth
Summary: Tick tock tick tock...
1. Chapter 1

It was nearly midnight, but Millicent Bagnold, Minister of Magic, was still sitting in her office and the only source of light was the old bulb above and the lamp standing on her desk. It was sort of beautiful, really, how the darkness of the night without fused with the light inside making the shadows curl darkly and elegantly between the folds of her magenta robes, around the creases on her forehead, snaked down one side of her face and along the arm to the hand that held a long, yellowing scroll of parchment. Her eyelids fluttered briefly beneath her gold spectacle frame. It really was quite late.

She scanned her tired grey eyes over the letter one more time and as though reading it had caused her physical pain, her eyes closed for a few seconds and she remained there, immobilised, frozen all over.

And then they opened, immediately pinning their gaze onto the clock on the opposite wall. Her eyes, flecks of hardened silver flickering around her irises with the ticking of the clock, bringing about distances to measure the minutes to midnight that spelled the end of the horrible week. With a loud finale clunk, the hands conjoined together at 12 and she got up from her chair with a bound of surprising energy. Snatching up the letter and stuffing it in her pocket, she waved her wand in one big circular motion and her office sprung to life as she walked out of the door.

The mahogany desk spat out its many drawers and the ruffling, organised papers slotted themselves into them, then closed together soundlessly. And as if they were paper prototype, her desk, the cabinet (which held numerous vases of tulips), the walls and even the wooden floor, folded themselves together like a giant-sized origami and only when her entire office was no bigger than a wallet did it stuff itself into the pocket of her robes and was no longer.

The sharp clip-clop of her high-heeled shoes resonated through the walkway as the door behind her simply melted into the white wall and out of sight. There were few lights illuminating the Ministry of Magic. It seemed to wallow in the only sound available to it and sent it back, again, again like a score of songbirds, but really was just emptiness.

She stepped into the elevator and the iron-wrought doors clanged shut, sending ripples into the space and made its way down to first basement and bumped into —

'Mr. Pestigur, have y- ….are you quite all right?' said Bagnold, peering into the old wizard's sunken, strangely blank face. She slipped her hand into her left pocket, gripping her wand.

'Yes… yes, I'm completely fine. Must be the…the…the weather.' Pestigur mumbled, snapping out of his reverie. 'Yes, the weather, just a little cold and tired is all.' He couldn't seem to meet her eyes. 'Best be going, Minister, since you're the last one. I'll pack up. Goodnight, Minister.'

'Goodnight, Mr Pestigur,' said Bagnold, but hardly noticed the greeting leave her mouth. She kept on staring long after he had shot her a tight-lipped smile that looked more like a grimace and hobbled as quickly as his skinny stiff legs could take him. Shaking her head slightly, as though trying to shake away the awful paranoia that leeched onto her like a layer of slime. We've got to trust people, she thought, looking at him extinguish the lights with a few flicks of his wand. Right now, overtaken with all the evil and darkness that anything could have mustered, if we couldn't even stop suspecting the fellow people around us, what is there left? And besides, everyone was worried sick these few days, it was pretty normal to not be completely on the dot. And it was really late.

Removing her hand from her pocket, she walked a few steps to the odd, dark tile at the side of the room and turned on the spot. The last thing she saw before she was overwhelmed in suffocation was the lights above flickering into darkness and whirled away.

And she was flying…flying…and she couldn't breathe, gasping for air…air, she needed air…air…air…And as soon as she was sure that she would die from the lack of oxygen, she popped up out of nowhere with a big resounding crack on the doorstep of her house.

Taking a huge, relieving, lungful of the fresh night air, she straightened out of her inelegant half-bow and took a moment to gather herself before grasping the knob with her right hand. It grew hot under her touch, burned lava red, before dimming and cooling down, though slightly wet with her hand sweat. She twisted it and for a moment she heard the prickling sound of slammed door and felt wrenching movement in her chest but the door gave way.

What had happened back there? She felt like a child, disapparating for the first time all over again. Shoving her trembling hands into her pockets, she took out the box and the letter and placed them onto the table and flashed in front of her the sound of shattering glass and shouting and she leapt back from it as though electrocuted.

She needed to stop thinking about it. It was in the past, gone. She was the Minister of Magic. She needed to up her game and pull herself together. This wasn't the time for falling apart, yet she had never felt more brittle. It was strange, she was never one for dwelling on the past, which was true: she hadn't thought about it that much after adulthood. Why now? In a moment of fleeting desperation, she scrunched up the petals of the flower tulip she loved so much, letting the wrinkled thing flutter to the ground and wasn't surprise to almost see how her hands looked like without their experienced coarseness.

Drawing in another huge breath to steady herself, she strode purposefully towards the bathroom door, determined that, nothing else would do, a hot bath was what she required to go to bed easily. However, not four steps towards it, she halted, turned to place her wand beside the box and the letter, before stepping into the room.

The past months had been a disaster. A mere 12 weeks after her success in campaigning for the top job, weeks of speeches and paperwork and handing out pamphlets, she had done it! The fifth female Minister in history, and still glowing with success came before her a letter from Albus Dumbledore, giving her a frustratingly cryptic warning of imminent peril, to brace herself, and the wizarding community. She had heard of Albus Dumbledore, who hasn't? That name was stamped over page after page of books after books like the printer had a crazy infatuation for him — the modern Merlin.

Who was he to tell her what to do? She had been most indignant to have received a letter from him, telli- no, suggesting certain measures that she should take, like she was some random giggling schoolgirl playing house. No, she was Millicent Bagnold, Minister of Magic, who rose above the terror of her childhood and into the magical world like one of steel. And yet, she couldn't help but feel the lingering wisps of magic in the air that spoke of cliff edges, last climbs, mounting influence, something…something just beyond her grasp.

And as though the demons had awaken out of their dormant sleep, all with her arbitrary ignorance came crashing down onto her together at once: Muggle attacks, threat messages from nowhere, and whispers of a wizard more powerful than the likes of anyone had seen before. And yet standing there, in the pounding heat of the shower, all the frustration, anger, bitterness, worry, the past, rose onto the surface of her skin and she let the warm water wash it away.

It was twenty minutes before Bagnold finally stepped out of the shower and wrapped a towel around herself and another one bundling up her wet hair piled on her head. The shower seemed to have galvanised something in her; she stuck out her little finger and drew a devil face on the fogging mirror, giggling unexpectedly. Ensuring that the towel was securely fastened around her body, she opened the door to her bedroom and wended her way out of steam.

He wouldn't have been noticeable if Bagnold hadn't been so sharp. He had his back turned, facing the quiet outside. His midnight robes rippling like calm waves in the galloping wind through the open window and the moon splayed soft light on the convexes. And turned, as though aware that he was being watched, though admittedly, she had not been discreet in opening the door.

'What are you doing here?' Her voice was steady. 'What do you want?'

He had his hood up, casting shadows over his entire face such that Bagnold could only see the edge of his white mouth. It was difficult to ignore the desperate thumping of her frantic heart that jolted her entire body with every beat.

'Oh, I think you know what I want,' he said, his voice scarily high, clear, and calm. 'I think you know very well what I want to do.'

Thump, thump, thump.

It had seemed as if all the whispers, lingerings, uneasiness she had felt had materialised physically in front of her and in the pace of the past few weeks, she had not realised… only once he spoke did it strike her that she was missing something.

'I had no idea someone like you could ever become Minister. Forgive me, but I think you incompetent and are indicative of the depths the world has sunk in scum to have even considered you a…person of importance,' he continued, his tone strangely light, and yet there was unmistakably a hint of malignity, the touch of dire contempt that was hard to ignore.

Thump thump thump thump.

'Who are you?' It seemed Bagnold had not heard the insults. She was staring intensely at him.

'Oh, I'm so glad you asked.' He whispered, his thin lips stretching painfully into a bloodless smile. 'It really is horrendous manners not to know the name of the person you are talking to, you know? And I know yours.'

THUMPTHUMPTHUMPTHUMPTHUMP

Raising a white, bony hand, he swept his hood off.

Bagnold's eyes were wide as saucers.

'To-?'

'NO!' he yelled harshly, pure hot rage twisting his features for the first time since their encounter. He looked mad enough to kill, and she supposed he was very capable of it.

'I…' His eyes glinted red, holding her rooted to the spot. '…am Lord Voldemort.'

Bagnold looked directly at the scarred, once-handsome face of Tom Marvolo Riddle as he whispered a two-worded spell. She could feel a droplet trickle down her back. And then a flash of bright green light burned against her eyes and rushed her into blackness.

What is there left?

The stirring question that slid itself minuscule between the cracks of unspoken words was yet hauntingly clear. He pulled the hood back over his head and with a defining swish of cloak noir, melted into the shadows and disappeared.

What is there left?

—..— —.

All of them donned badly mismatched muggle clothing, only adding to the oddity of the whole situation of forty of so grown men gawking at the green apparition in the sky and looking as if they had popped out from the nineteenth century. The garden they were standing in was so grotesquely small, all of them looked very massively clumsy in it and the two wizards at the back were squashed precariously near the rose bush. The skull figure in the sky cast a ghostly green visage over its black surroundings. It was completely still and yet the deep sunken sockets gave off the creepy impression of staring and its smooth porcelain skull seemed to pulse with the vitality of lost treasure, feeling intensified with the weird looking sceptre next to it.

"Alright, the skull doesn't seem to be doing any harm. Fudge, Scrimingeour, Clatinue, Moody, you're with me. The rest, disperse yourselves. You know what to do." Crouch was the first to snap his eyes away from the figure in the air. He had already steadied his gaze on the house door, as if trying to unlock everything beyond it with his eyes. The lips beneath his toothbrush shaped moustache stiffened slightly.

"Remember —"

"SSSSSAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA"

The whole bunch of them jumped in shock at the same time and the previously still and unsure wizards and witches were suddenly a mass of stumbling and stuttering, as a loud, strangely vicious and scary hiss emanated from the figure in the sky. Something about it stirred inside of everyone an innate fear that tugged violently the instinctive bone.

"Woah! Sorry there, Bomone!" Fudge squeaked as he elbowed Richard Bomone of the Auror department in the face, as he staggered back, looking horrified at either the amount of blood splattered on his victim's face or the revelation of how high his voice could actually go. Or both.

What Crouch had thought was a sceptre at first was actually a giant snake. It had sprung suddenly to life, hissing venomously and slithering inside the white jaws of the skull as it opened and closed sluggishly, as if underwater, its triangular face leering and hissing.

"What is that?"

"—some sort of alarm?"

"Is it…Is it real?" A particularly scrawny witch couldn't take her eyes off it.

"ARRGGHHHHH! A THORN'S STUCK IN MY BLOODY—"

Purple crackers shot out of Crouch's wand, bursting angrily into showery sparks and bangs. Everyone fell silent.

"Everyone! Calm yourselves. We are professionals!" Crouch barked. He and he alone had not been affected by it. "Resume your positions!"

Crouch strode purposeful long strides towards the door, the other four following behind. Moody, his beady black eyes flitting around violently; Fudge, who couldn't stop spinning his purple bowler hat; Scrimingeour, intensely focused, though his lion mane of hair had fallen out of its neatness; and Clatinue, looking unconcerned, but the hand that gripped his wand was trembling slightly.

Raising one hand above the doorknob dramatically, he hesitated for only a second before bringing it down and turning it, and surprisingly it flew open without resistance. They clambered after him through the threshold.

He scanned the dark interior with a trained, practiced eye.

"Lumos," he muttered, as the tip of his wand lit a bright blue. Behind him, he could hear the others do the same.

The thuds of heart pounded in his ears, his chest, his whole body. "Spread out," he added tersely, already moving towards the door on the right.

Jabbing his wand slightly, the door swung open yet again, revealing several pots and pans lying in the sink and a few clear tables. The kitchen was tinged a pale blue. Waving his wand around, he moved swiftly around the tables and the counters, opening several cabinets and drawers but they only contained kitchen stuff that didn't seem to be worthy of any suspicion.

Just as he was about to go around one last time, the wavering voice of Cornelius Fudge drifted from somewhere in the house, "I-I think I f-found something."

Crouch tightened the grip on his wand so much that his knuckles were white. And following the sound, he proceeded carefully through the corridors, flinching with so much as a creak or a rustle. The others were already there. They were squashed together, standing awkwardly in front of the door, blocking the entrance of the door, not speaking to each other. As though in a dream, he elbowed his way ungraciously to the front, the others shuffling out of his way to let him through. He could feel the weight of their stares and expectations pressing uncomfortably on his shoulders.

Fingers feeling slightly numb, he pushed open yet another door, his wand raised in preparation. Once he stepped over the line across the doorway, he felt an unnatural chill spike through his entire body. He could feel it, smell it, the room was full of it. It seemed to mumble, whisper, murmur all around him in a furious fury of words and yet he knew it wasn't any language that he knew. Moving as if in a trance, he, slowly, made his way to the body lying on the ground. Her hair was spread on the floor like a halo and her arms rested peacefully on her abdomen, which was covered by a towel. And her face…her face a pearly pale, and in sleep, she looked younger than she had had in years. His legs brought him forwards towards her.

His near presence had triggered something in her: her eyes flew open in one massive flap of motion. There was something wrong with them, almond-shaped, but a complete reptilian red, which looked fixedly at the ceiling above. Her mouth fell open and was empty, save for a bright green light that let out a ghostly wail, as her body was lifted up into the air, a graceful arch, she could have been flying, before dissolving into aurora wisps of pale smoke that whirled around him like a tornado, screaming, yelling, shouting...

And was gone. He stumbled out of the room, gasping, his ears still ringing with the force of that one word, amidst the startled cries of his fellow wizards.

"I know who it is."


	2. Chapter 2

If you were to stand at the peak of one of those mountains, feel the wind whipping you all around, feeling the sun rise behind you, silhouette on the ground before you, and gaze down at all the tiny towns, forests that looked like bushes of green and everything would feel infinitely insignificant that stretched all the way as far as you could see, into the horizon. And everything would become little flicks of fast motion and just over there, there…you could feel the tingling warmth of the dawn of another day you, standing on the tip of the world, just beyond the sky.

And flying, you fall onto the waking town of Mary Clamount, and watch another story unfold.

—..— —.

The last time there had been something at least major enough to befall this town of non-major happenings was when the two Evans sisters had a huge shouting match, with the blonde one yelling from the window of the second storey and the feisty red-head yelling equally loudly from the backyard. The women going to the market, with their shopping bags swinging in their arms, the children playing ball or shovelling at each other, the people in suits on their way to work; everyone seemed to stop doing whatever they were doing to gawk at the scene. Those who managed to catch snippets of their conversation were very excited indeed and went around town gossiping with one another.

"—screamed like a ban-shee, guess it runs in the family, that kind of voice." A lady who looked like a banshee nodded knowingly, touching and squeezing the oranges.

"Well, on the topic of genes, they migh' 'ave skipped a generation, ah 'member the mother, wunderful…." the fruit seller said, packaging the oranges,

"Oh, I know the blond one! Absolute crazy little bat! Brat's screamed at me when all I asked her what she was cryin' all about." A man who was clearly eavesdropping added.

"The redhead's off her rocker too! Shoutin' rubbish 'bout warts 'nd doors. Completely lost 'er mind, din' she?"

"—Bleargh!" another man choked on the watermelon he was eating, signalling the end of their conversation as he threw up all over their shoes and everyone was too busy holding their noses and escaping to notice a cat, seemingly unperturbed by the loud swears and stamping and running, slink away.

In the six years that passed since that incident, the Evans sisters had grown quite a bit since then. Petunia, the older one had become something of a blonde stick. Her long blonde straight hair feel way past her waist and she always had a ridiculous amount of make-up on her face, which Lily thought made her look like her 5th birthday's cake, a comment she almost always manage to slip in somehow, infuriating Petunia to no end. But, however caked in cream or monstrous Lily made her sister out to be, Petunia, to the unbiased eye, was actually quite pretty, if not for that air of utter contempt around her, like there was something unpleasant constantly under her nose.

Lily, on the other hand, was short as Petunia was tall, which was very short indeed. Her fiery temper, combined with her red hair, often led to people muttering about her head being on fire when she so much as raised her voice. The only thing Lily truly appreciated about her appearance was her kind, almond-shaped green eyes, which shone through her red hair and alabaster-pale skin like two emerald stones. This was also that marked her off as different from the rest of the Evans family as her mother (red hair and petite with hazel eyes), father (blond and tall with blue eyes) and Petunia all did not have them the same shade and shape as Lily's. The genetic lottery must have skipped a few generations and the green eyes must have landed on her. However, this was not the only thing that marked her uniqueness in the family.

Lily was a witch. Not a ghastly, wrinkled, hunch-bakced old lady (though she must have been young once) with horrible hair and a long nose, forever bent over a cauldron, concocting some evil potion (she did study Potions, but not necessarily evil ones) with a scarecrow for a pet. She was a part of a magical, hidden world with all sorts if mythical creatures that muggles (non-magical human-beings) stereotyped into bizarre otherworldly beings. Some muggles must have caught sight of all those back in the early days and the figure of them had been twisted in the centuries with each telling. Lily had been attending a school called Hogwarts school of Witchcraft and Wizardry for the past six years and would be going for her final year this September.

The aforementioned Lily Marie Evans was currently lying sprawled on her bed, asleep at the moment, but not for long. Her thick red hair was plastered all over her pillow, around her slightly tilted head with her mouth was wide open with a bit of hair stuck in it. Her limbs flailed like she was trying to fall into the mattress and sleep there forever.

Tap! Tap! Tap!

Lily cracked open an eyelid, her eyelashes fluttering as she fought to keep it open and took a glance at the clock beside her. "Eight o'clock?!" she groaned, covering her eyes with the crook of her arm. "That's like, the middle of the night!" Her voice sounded terribly weird, the way voices do after eleven hours of misuse, like there was snot wrapped around her voice box. Or was it her eyes that had the sleepy problem? Probably both, she decided, before sinking back int…

Tap!tap!tap! it ensued.

"Sleeping, mum."

Taptaptap

With a frustrated roar of defeat, Lily wrenched her body off the bed and stood wobbly on her feet, staggering towards the door with her pyjama shirt riding up at the side. Grumbling inarticulately under her breath, she yanked open the door with unnecessary force, allowing it to bounce off the wall behind it.

"Mum, if you woke me up just to ask me where…" her voice trailed off.

The hallway was empty.

"Oh."

What she planned to do was to turn back to her bed and fall asleep for another hundred years but what really happened was some kind of pirouette on one foot, mad flapping of arms and a slip to the floor on her butt that left her dazed, sore and confused with her legs in the air. Squinting slightly against the sunlight glaring into her room, she saw a large, flapping…thing, which was the source of her waking up too early. Lily scrambled to her feet and hurried to the window as though she were a particularly poor skater (her pyjama bottoms were covering her feet) and opened it. Hurled in a huge bronze mass of feather and attitude was an owl. It landed on her bed frame and pompously began rearranging its feathers with the letter still gripped tightly in its foot. Only when every single feather was completely aligned in the same direction, did it shake its magnificent head disapprovingly at her and stuck out its left claw and handed over the letter, which Lily snatched away eagerly, almost pulling the owl out of balance in her haste.

The grey owl, glaring at her with amber, ethereal eyes, lifted itself into flight from her bed, sweeping its feathers in her face before she could reach over to pat its head. Slowly, she turned back to look at the letter on her lap, and as she was tracing her fingers over the writing on the back, another owl (tawny this time) swooped in through her open window. This one had a whole wad of newspaper stuck in its mouth, which it promptly dropped on the floor at her feet, and she leant over to pick it up. On the front page, stamped boldly, darkly was the title "Three More Attacks on Muggles Last Night".

Something roared inside of her. Spewing the newspaper aside with such force that the pages in between flew out and splattered themselves across her bedroom floor, she picked up the first letter with a red seal of the Hogwarts school crest stamped at the centre of the letter. Lily ripped the letter open, gasped and raced out of her bedroom, leaving the envelope to flutter slowly to the ground, like a falling angel whose wings were torn, split, right through the middle of the red crest that held the letter together.

Lily bounded down the stairs two at a time, jumped the last four and hurled straight into her sister, Petunia, who had a plate of scrambled eggs balanced precariously in her hands. It would have been hilarious, if not for the glare that seemed to slice like razors. Taking a step back, Lily realised how messy it was. Scrambled eggs smashed into a mass of yellow goo that dripped like slime down Petunia's already yellow shirt. Some of it had even managed to fly as high to stripe her left cheek, which was crimson with rage. Altogether not very elegant, Lily had to admit.

"Haha…urm…at least the eggs match your top?" Lily said sheepishly, raising her tone at the end even though it wasn't a question.

With that last remark, Petunia's face darkened a shade further. The piece of egg on her cheek had never been more emphasised. Thrusting her plate at Lily and with one last furious look at her, Petunia ran up the stairs almost as fast as Lily had come down, but naturally gravity won.

After a round of washing up and getting the food on the plates, the family of four could finally sit down and have breakfast, though the atmosphere was rather subdued. Nobody seemed to know what to say. Lily clutched the scroll of parchment tightly in her hand and indecisiveness pumped in her blood like strangling. And so she steeled herself, gathering it all at the throat of speech, took a deep breath and let it out, "I have good news!" Her voice sounded dreadfully cheery. At this, her parents perked up immediately. Another deep breath, "I'm Head Girl!" A pregnant pause. Petunia temporarily froze.

"That's wonderful!" her parents exclaimed at the same time. "Isn't it, Petunia?"

Even the hairs on her blonde head stiffened slightly. And looking as if there was a large rock at the back of her neck, she glanced briefly at Lily and looked back down quickly.

"We are so proud of you, darling!" her mother squealed again, too busy prancing around the kitchen in delight to notice anything. "We want to see your badge! My Lily flower…Head Girl! I can't believe it!"

Lily walked along the corridor, the walls unlit surrounded her in a rectangle and all over them were pictures, of Petunia's graduation from school; her parents together when her mum got a promotion from work; Lily out of kindergarten, Lily receiving top honours in primary school; Lily during her science fair; Lily after her first year at Hogwarts, her second, her third... And she saw everything mapped out before her in pictures of her key events and the light yellow wallpaper peeking out between them felt so solid and cold under her touch, and under the papery feeling she could feel the hollowness behind the walls and knew that in another world, if things had been different, they would have danced to life under the tips of her fingers that now and here never knew hers to have been so long.

Her badge…she had never looked at it long enough before. The way you skim through a book in you excitement to read it to the end. It really was quite pretty, she thought as she turned the cold metal over and over and over and over…

And thump…thump…thump… down the stairs.

Here…here…take it! Her parents spoke words admiration that rang in circles, running round, round, round, round.

And Petunia…Tuney? Click clack click clack…she wasn't looking.

And tick tock tick tock the hands of the clock.

Round, round, round, round.

Tick tock, tick tock.

And watching Petunia, she could sort of see her hair unstraighten into waves, her face softening into the baby roundness of childhood.

And eyes.

Tick tock, tick tock.

Her eyes glancing up at Lily, they surprised her with their blue, wrinkling at the corners with a small secret smile across the table.

Tick tock, tick tock.

And all hands of the clock decided to go left instead and the Sun melted into darkness at Heaven's East gates instead, and all went back to that morning six years ago before her father handed her that yellow parchment letter with a red seal that changed everything.

Tick tock tick


End file.
